Ambush at Still Lake

A Financial Times Poetry Book of the Year 2024

Caroline Bird's new poems show us the ambush of real life that occurs in the stillness after the happy ending. This is a collection about marriage, lesbian parenthood, addiction and recovery in which a recurring dream is playing out: a world where mums impale themselves on pogo-sticks, serial killers rattle around in basements, baby monitors are haunted by someone else's baby and, through it all, love stays and stays like a stationary rollercoaster that turns out to be the scariest, most thrilling ride in the amusement park.

Her editor welcomed the book in these terms: 'It is bleak, repellent and hilarious in an American Psycho-ish way. Hectic and vivid.'

'Vegetable crisps.
The words yawn like a black hole,
sucking my eyes backwards
into my head until I see
my own brain glowing
like a radioactive cauliflower.'